The Golden City

24

Boone arrived with his team half an hour before Martin Doyle was supposed to be released from prison. The motorcycle riders zoomed up and down the road a few times, and then everyone waited beneath a banyan tree growing in a field across from the prison parking lot. Children, small and delicate, climbed the branches of the tree and gazed down at the three Thai men and the three foreigners. One of the little girls wore a garland of flowers around her neck. She plucked off the orange and yellow petals and watched them flutter to the muddy ground.

The motorcycle riders were Thai military policemen who wore jeans and flashy silk shirts instead of their uniforms. They would chase Doyle if he tried to escape. Boone and the two Australian mercenaries would sit behind them.

The older Australian was a chunky little man named Tommy Squires who followed directions and only got drunk when the job was over. Tommy had brought along a friend named Ryan Horsley. Boone was starting to dislike the young man. Horsley was an ex-rugby player who thought he was tough. There was nothing particularly wrong with that idea, but Horsley also thought he was clever-and that was a sad error. Boone always preferred employees who were smart enough to be aware of their own stupidity.

The heat and humidity made everyone feel slow. The policeman bought fruit drinks from a road vendor and sat in the shade while Squires and Horsley inspected the lances. One of Boone’s contacts had purchased the lances in Singapore, where they were called ECCDs-Electrified Crowd Control Devices. They were six-foot long white plastic poles with blunt ends. When the tip came into contact with a human being and was compressed slightly, it delivered a 50,000 volt shock.

In China, the ECCDs were used for breaking up demonstrations where the crowd locked arms or sat down in the street. The problem with Tasers or pepper spray was that the demonstrators never knew when the officer was going to pull the trigger. If a crowd encountered a line of policemen carrying Plexiglas shields and ECCDs, they could see their punishment heading down the street, getting closer, a little closer. When the tip of the lance was about two or three feet from their faces, they would usually panic and run.

Boone took out a pair of compact binoculars and scrutinized the prison administration building. A Thai driver named Sunchai had parked his delivery van near the entrance. Boone checked his watch. If everything went according to schedule, Doyle would be released in five or ten minutes.

“You ready?” he asked the Australians. “We’ll wait until the van pulls out of the parking lot, then follow about 100 meters behind. I know it’s hot, but make sure you wear the motorcycle helmets. I don’t want Doyle to glance in the rearview mirror and see three foreigners.”

“So when is he going to break and run?” Horsley asked.

“I don’t know. With traffic, it’s a two-hour drive from here to the airport.”

“But he’s definitely going to do it?”

“Very few things in life are definite, Mr. Horsley.”

“This whole thing doesn’t make sense. When he strolls out of the building, we should cuff the wanker, pull a sack over his head and toss him in the van. Instead we’re going to ride around holding these pig stickers.”

Squires raised his hands like someone trying to stop a runaway shopping cart. “Ryan doesn’t mean to offend, Mr. Boone. He’s just the curious type.”

“What if your neighbor owned a vicious dog?” Boone asked. “And what if he let his dog wander freely around the neighborhood? Don’t you think that would be irresponsible?”

“You bet it would,” Horsley said. “I’d take a shovel and kill the brute.”

“We don’t want to kill Mr. Doyle. But we want to show him that negative actions have negative consequences.”

“I get the picture,” Squire said and turned to his younger friend. “This is just like what they taught us back in church school. We want this bastard to feel the wrath of a righteous god.”

Boone’s handheld computer began to beep, so he walked around the tree and leaned against the trunk. His staff in London had sent him an urgent message: HSC Columba. Images attached.

Three months earlier, Boone and Michael had left Skillig Columba with Matthew Corrigan’s body. Before the helicopter returned to the mainland, Boone sent one of his men down to the island’s dock to install a HSC-a hidden surveillance camera. The device was battery-powered and had a solar chip for recharging. It would only send images if a motion detector triggered the shutter.

A red flower petal landed on Boone’s shoulder. He glanced up at the branch above him, and two little girls giggled at his reaction. The tree was filled with children, and more children were squatting on the dirt in front of him. Boone tried to ignore them as he studied the eighteen images attached to the email. In the first few photographs, an old man arrived on the island in a fishing boat and began unloading supply containers. In the sixth photo, a group of nuns was standing on the dock. It must have been windy that day; their cloaks and veils were flapping wildly. The nuns looked like giant black birds about to fly off into the clouds.

In the fourteenth image, a new person appeared in the camera frame: an Asian girl wearing jeans and a quilt jacket. Boone placed a grid over the girl’s face and made the image larger. Yes, he knew her. It was the child he had encountered in the classroom building at New Harmony. She had disappeared into the New York subway tunnels with Maya and ended up on the island.

The girl in the quilt jacket was a threat to the Brethren’s security. If her story appeared on the Internet it would challenge the carefully prepared explanation of what had happened at New Harmony. According to the Arizona State Police, a dangerous cult had destroyed itself-no one in the media had challenged that theory.

The solution to the problem was clear, but Boone didn’t feel like giving the order. This was all Martin Doyle’s fault; he was a blister that wouldn’t go away. For six years, Boone had tried to establish the Brethren’s vision. The electronic Panopticon was supposed to usher in a new kind of society where people like Doyle would be tracked, identified and destroyed. But now a demon was being set free, and Boone was the man unlocking the prison door.

The handheld computer beeped again as if it was demanding a response. Boone switched on his satellite phone and called Gerry Westcott, the head of operations in London.

“I saw the images from the island.”

“Did you recognize the Asian girl?” Westcott asked. “She’s also in the surveillance photos taken in the New York subway.”

“I don’t want a termination,” Boone said. “We need an acquisition so that I can question her.”

“That might be difficult.”

“You have ten or twelve hours to get it organized. If they’re going to London, they’ll take the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead.”

“That’s probably right. It’s too risky to take the plane.”

“Give me updates every three hours. Thank you.”

As Boone switched off the phone, a flower pedal fluttered down and landed on the top of his head. All the children giggled loudly as Boone flicked the petal away.

“Excuse me, sir.” Squires stood in front of him. “I think Mr. Doyle is coming out of the prison…”

Boone took out his binoculars and circled the trunk of the banyan tree. Captain Tansiri had just escorted Doyle from the administration building, and the big American climbed into the delivery van.

“That him?” Horsley looked like a boy about to go hunting.

Boone nodded. “Let’s get ready.”

The three foreigners put on the motorcycle helmets, grabbed the lances, and climbed onto the motorcycles behind the Thai riders. Seconds later, they were following the van as it headed toward the Bangkok airport. Nothing happened for the first few miles. The van moved slowly down a two-lane road past thatch-roofed houses and vegetable gardens. Boone’s helmet didn’t have any vents, and sweat trickled down his neck.

“This bird’s not going to fly,” Horsley said into his radio headset. “Maybe he sees us with these pig stickers.”

“Stay on the bike,” Boone said. “We’re following him all the way to the airport.”

About twenty miles from the prison, the van entered a large town that appeared to specialize in the manufacture and sale of silk fabric. Crimson dye trickled out of a home workshop and flowed into the gutter. Lengths of silk dried on backyard clotheslines-the fabric so thin and delicate that sunlight made the colors glow. Once again, Boone found himself thinking about the Asian girl standing on the dock with the nuns.

A marketplace filled a dirt side street in the middle of the town. There were wooden booths the size of small closets, carts piled high with manufactured goods, and market women squatting behind pyramids of oranges. The van stopped to let an ox cart pass. All of a sudden, Doyle climbed out of the van. He wasn’t frightened of the driver or worried about the police. He shouted a threat over his shoulder and sauntered through the open market.

“Mr. Horsley goes first,” Boone said into the headset, and the Australian slapped his rider’s shoulder. The motorcycle took off-its back tire spitting off flecks of red mud. Doyle heard the engine above the din of the market. He stopped, twisted his head around, and saw a man with a tinted helmet and a white staff speeding toward him like a knight on the battlefield.

The fugitive began running. He stepped behind a young woman with a basket of peppers balanced on her head, but she saw the bike approaching and flung herself to one side. The lance hit Doyle on his left shoulder blade. It was just a brief shock, but it made the American stagger.

Squires attacked a few seconds later, hitting Doyle in the lower back. This time, Doyle fell to his knees as the bike continued past him. The fugitive looked back and saw that Boone was about a hundred feet away, lowering the lance into a horizontal position. In few seconds, he was back on his feet and stumbling down a narrow pathway between two stalls.

Boone grabbed his rider’s belt and held on with one hand as the bike skidded in the mud. They made the turn and roared through the gap. Doyle was about twenty yards ahead of them-his head down, his arms extended as if he wanted to run on all fours. As the motorcycle got closer he dodged to the left, but Boone’s lance hit the big man’s leg and the shock flung him forward.

The two Australians reached the site and jumped off their bikes. Boone decided that more pain would teach a stronger lesson, so he let them jab their lances a dozen times. Doyle rolled in the mud like an epileptic having a seizure. “It’s the righteous god!” Squires shouted. “Feel that righteous god!”

A local policeman ran up, but the riders showed their military identification and announced that they had just arrested a terrorist. The van arrived a minute later, and plastic restraints were placed on Doyle’s wrists, arms and legs. Finally, he was gagged with a swatch of duct tape and loaded into the van like a slab of meat.

“Tell the riders to take you back to the hotel,” Boone told Squires. “Your money will arrive tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir. Is there any other way we can help you?”

“Tell Mr. Horsley to keep his mouth shut.”

Boone got in the back of the van and told the driver to head to the airport. Then he took a syringe out of his shoulder bag and jabbed it into a vial filled with a powerful tranquilizer. Doyle was lying on this back. His eyes rolled wildly when he saw the needle.

“When you wake up in America, you’ll have a wound on your right hand and another on the middle of your chest. We’re going to insert tracer beads between your skin and muscle. These devices will tell us where you are at all times.”

The syringe was full. When Boone leaned forward, Doyle moaned; he was trying to open his mouth and say something.

“If you run again, I’ll hunt you down just like we did today. You can’t escape, Doyle. It’s just not possible. I’m going to watch you until your task is done.”